Two decades ago, in my book on fire in Madagascar published at the University of Chicago Press, I made an educated guess that “in grasslands, roughly one-quarter to one-half of the surface burns annually“. A footnote fills over half of the page to justify my estimate, drawing from local studies, observations, government statistics, and rudimentary satellite data. I am thrilled to report that a just-published study confirms this estimate and makes it more precise, finding that 32% or so of the grasslands burn each year. The study takes advantage of newer satellite images that are more frequent and higher resolution to make its estimates, catching smaller and more ephemeral (quickly regreening) fire patches. Congratulations to Víctor Fernández-García on leading this work, funded by a Swiss Network for International Studies grant.
Like over a million (!) other viewers, I was captivated by the recent video “What’s inside this crater in Madagascar?” by Christophe Haubursin on Vox. Curiosity, satellite images, internet, a budget for a talented local filmmaker, and excellent production allow the team to explore why a village appears out of nothing fifteen years ago inside a remote broad, circular mountain in central Madagascar. Having spent days and days poring over historical air photos and maps of highland Madagascar for my own research, I palpably felt empathy for Haubursin’s landscape voyeurism. Then imagine my excitement as I realised I’ve been there myself, almost at the village site, on the southern summit of the mountain Ambohiby, in 1999, before it was built!
In this post, I’ll do two things: comment on some photos from my 1999 climb of Ambohiby, and give some leads for people looking to read further on the colonisation of empty lands in highland Madagascar, as I have been researching the settlement of new lands by Betsileo farmers since my masters thesis fieldwork in 1994.
My photo of the view north from Ambohiby summit in July 1999. The new village site Anosibe Ambohiby would be in the burn scar in the middle. Read the rest of this entry »
Figure 6 from the paper (” Land cover ~1966 (a) and 1973 (b), and natural forest cover and transformations 1966–1979 (c, d).”)
The FT Viet project’s new paper in the journal Land Use Policy is a major contribution both to studies of “forest transitions” (the idea that as places develop over time, forest loss switches to forest regrowth) and to the specific history of forest dynamics in central Vietnam’s Thừa Thiên-Huế province. Led by Roland Cochard, with remote sensing whizzery contributed by Mathieu Gravey and colleagues, this paper is a very rich and careful historical analysis of fifty years of forest change based on remote sensing and documentary sources.
We are offering a funded PhD scholarship for research on the governance of tree planting and forest restoration in Madagascar, focused on land and tree tenure, building on Ribot and Peluso’s (2003) theory of access. Come join us in an exciting University of Lausanne – University of Antananarivo collaboration funded by the Velux Stiftung. Students will be based in the doctoral school GRND at the University of Antananarivo, with co-supervision by Prof. Bruno Ramamonjisoa, me and Stephanie Mansourian. Deadline October 1.
Colleagues from the FT Viet project have now published their top-notch research based on a set of rigorous in-depth surveys of tree farmers in Thừa Thiên-Huế province, central Vietnam. About a fifth of this province is now covered with tree plantations, mostly comprising the Australasian fast-growing tree Acacia magnum and Acacia magnum x Acacia auriculiformis hybrids. They interviewed 180 farmers across districts in the coastal plains, midland hills, and uplands, with half involved in Forest Stewardship Council groups that produce timber sawlogs under FSC certification standards, and half not involved (these tended to produce wood chips instead). The two published articles are an extremely rich and well-described source for understanding the development of acacia plantations over time, their relation to farmer assets and livelihoods, changes in land management, and farmer’s views on environmental challenges and future opportunities.
Acacia plantations as far as the eye can see – at Kim Quy (Golden Turtle) Pass, Thừa Thiên-Huế provinceRead the rest of this entry »
Two new funded PhD scholarships for research on the governance of tree planting and forest restoration in Madagascar (one focused on land and tree tenure and resource access; the other focused on the dynamics, networks, and power relations of involved actors and institutions). Come join us in an exciting University of Lausanne – University of Antananarivo collaboration funded by the Velux Stiftung. Students will be based in the doctoral school GRND at the University of Antananarivo, with co-supervision by Prof. Bruno Ramamonjisoa, me and Stephanie Mansourian. Deadline August 20.
The “FTViet” project, which investigated the nature of forest transitions in central Vietnam through research, capacity building, and policy making is in its last year. Here’s a relaxing 15 minute video produced by our wonderful partners at the NGO Corenarm summarising the project. It gives a nice sense of the landscapes and people involved (Subtitles in English).
Visiting a community-managed forest in upland A Luoi districtThe head of the provincial forest service opens the workshop
Our FT Viet project recently held a science-policy workshop on forest change and sustainability. After over five years of project activities, it was a chance to report on project outcomes and bring together key actors to reflect on the trends, direction, and sustainability of forest management in Vietnam. The 40+ people assembled in a hotel conference room in Hue on June 9 included people working at the national level in Hanoi, others from Thua Thien Hue and nearby provinces in the north Central region, and local stakeholders. There were university researchers and leaders, officials from the national payments for ecosystem services program, conservationists, leaders of forest certification programs, NGOs, and, of course, state foresters in their green uniforms.
Wanting to preserve biodiversity in tropical forest areas without involving the local and indigenous communities that live there is neither fair nor effective, say ecologist Jacques Tassin and geographer Christian Kull. This was the tag line for our recent opinion piece published in the French newspaper Le Monde. Thanks so much to my friend and collaborator Jacques Tassin for involving me in this project. Below, I’ve made an English translation of the article, and also inserted some of the references that inspired us.
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Christian Kull 